Vincent Mallette has written a nice article
titled A
Brief History of Lighting. He discusses Swan's contribution
in
his very long addendum. He mentions that for a time, the two
fathers
of the lightbulb sold them under the trade name Ediswan.

A short summary on this topic can be found in
the great
book Everything You Know Is Wrong by Paul
Kirchner (1995, Rhino Records, Santa Monica, California) on pages 58-59.

Edison
didn't
invent them, and what it means to be "Westinghoused".

So,
who invented
the lightbulb?

Most people would answer little Tommy Edison, but they would
be wrong.

In fact, they were being used as electric lights for more than
50 years
prior to his patent date.

In addition, Edison was not the first to patent the modern
design of
the lightbulb.

It seems that an inventor named Joseph Swan demonstrated the
same carbon
filament lightbulb in Newcastle at least ten months prior to Edison's
announcement.
In addition, Swan received a British patent in 1878 for the same bulb
that
Edison patented in the U. S. in 1879.

Did Edison know about Swan's work, or did they simply work
independently
and arrive at the same conclusion? There is no question that Edison had
seen a Scientific American article on Swan's preliminary work with
carbon
filament electric lighting. But Swan's work had not been perfected at
this
point, so Edison may have arrived at his invention by improving on
Swan's
preliminary designs.

Eventually, Edison was the one making the big $$$ off this
invention
and Swan was rightfully upset with this situation.

So, if you were in Swan's boots, what would you do?

Sue the pants off of Edison.

And that is exactly what Swan did.

Edison lost in the British courts for infringement of Swan's
patent.
As part of the settlement, Edison was forced to take Swan in as a
partner
in his British electric works. The company was called the Edison
and
Swan United Electric Company. Eventually, Edison acquired all of
Swan's
interest in the company.

In
the United
States, Edison didn't have the chance to put up a fight. The U.S.
Patent
Office had ruled on October 8, 1883 that Edison's patents were based on
the prior art of a man named William Sawyer and were invalid. In
addition,
Swan had already sold his U.S. patent rights to the Brush Electric
Company
in June of 1882.

So why does Edison get all the credit for the invention of the
lightbulb?

Very simple, he owned the power company - what was to
eventually become
General Electric.

After all, what use is a light bulb without electricity?
Edison set
up a system of power distribution in New York City. He used the DC
(direct
current) system, which is no longer used.

As a side note, one of our greatest and least recognized
scientists,
Nikola Tesla, designed the modern system of AC (and the first
hydroelectric
plant at Niagara Falls) for George Westinghouse.

From 1879 to 1882, Edison only sold 3,144 bulbs to 203
Manhattan customers.
After another seven years, their customer base grew to only 710!
Eventually,
word of mouth and lower electricity costs led to a rapid increase in
customers.
Ten years later, there were three million customers.

By the way, the original bulbs only lasted for 150 hours (an
average
one lasts 1500 hours today). Within ten years, Edison had perfected a
1200
hour bulb.

Which leads us to a really useful device - the electric
chair!

The story goes something like this:

Both Edison and Westinghouse developed an electric chair to
kill our
convicts. They sold the devices as the only humanely way to
execute.

The major debate was whether to use Edison's DC or
Westinghouse's AC
electric chair.

One would think that Edison would have pushed for the adoption
of his
DC electric chair as the chair of choice. Instead, Edison actually
endorsed
Westinghouse's competing AC system.

Why? Very simple. Edison had so much money invested in the DC
electric
system that he had to show that AC was too dangerous for use in the
household.
The best way to do this was to have the AC system be the system of
choice
for the electric chair.

New
York was
the first state to try the electric chair (today it would be
California).
They bought one of those AC chairs - and guess what - it didn't work.
No
one had ever tested it before.

Edison's plan to show how dangerous AC current was backfired
on him.

Within a few years, it became obvious that AC was the better
system.
Eventually, AC current was adopted as the current of choice worldwide
as
it can be delivered more efficiently along power lines.

Lastly, due to Edison's push for an AC electric chair, for
many years
people referred to the process of being electrocuted in the chair as to
being "Westinghoused".

ZZZZZaaaaapppppp!

Useless? Useful? I’ll leave that for you to
decide.

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